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  • Journal of Marketing Research (JMR)

Repairing the Damage: The Effect of Price Knowledge and Gender on Auto-Repair Price Quotes

By: Meghan Busse, Ayelet Israeli and Florian Zettelmeyer
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Abstract

In this paper we investigate whether sellers treat consumers differently on the basis of how well informed consumers appear to be. We implement a large-scale field experiment in which callers request price quotes from automotive repair shops. We show that sellers alter their initial price quotes depending on whether consumers appear to be correctly informed, uninformed, or misinformed about market prices. We find that repair shops quote higher prices to callers who cite a higher benchmark price. We find that women are quoted higher prices than men when callers signal that they are uninformed about market prices. However, gender differences disappear when callers mention a benchmark price for the repair. Finally, we find that repair shops are more likely to offer a price concession if asked to do so by a woman than a man.

Keywords

Pricing; Price Discrimination; Automobiles; Field Experiment; Information; Fairness; Price; Knowledge Use and Leverage; Internet and the Web; Gender; Service Industry; Auto Industry

Citation

Busse, Meghan, Ayelet Israeli, and Florian Zettelmeyer. "Repairing the Damage: The Effect of Price Knowledge and Gender on Auto-Repair Price Quotes." Journal of Marketing Research (JMR) 54, no. 1 (February 2017): 75–95.
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About The Author

Ayelet Israeli

Marketing
→More Publications

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  • Using GPT for Market Research By: James Brand, Ayelet Israeli and Donald Ngwe
  • How to Seed Organic Marketing in a Video-First World By: Ayelet Israeli, Leonard A. Schlesinger and Matt Higgins
  • Athletic Brewing Company: Crafting the U.S Non-Alcoholic Beer Category By: Ayelet Israeli and Anne V. Wilson
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